Nippon Ichi outperformed its expectations for the first half of the fiscal year (4/1 to 9/30), reporting today sales of 1,183 million yen and net earnings of 122 million yen. It had previously forecast a net loss of 10 million yen.

In its earning report, the company mentioned strong North American performance for Disgaea 4. Domestically, following the recovery of PlayStation Network, download content sales for Disgaea 4 were strong.

Outside of strong performance for its video game publishing business, the company also made note of royalties from its license business, where it, for instance, licenses its characters to other companies. It made particular mention of royalties from the "Nippon Ichi-shan" character in Idea Factory's Neptune mk2.

Nippon Ichi also mentioned strong performance from what it refers to as "other businesses." This includes management of amusement facilities and game development. The Nippon Ichi-developed Uta no Prince-sama Repeat, released by Broccoli on PSP in August, saw increased orders thanks to the airing of the Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love 1000% anime in July.

Despite the improved midterm results, Nippon Ichi kept its annual forecast figures the same, at 2,288 million yen sales and net earnings of 59 million yen. The reason it did not update these figures is because it said there are still some elements about upcoming products that aren't finalized.

You can see Nippon Ichi's full earnings statement here (PDF, Japanese).